John Key’s resignation just made the 2017 election a battleground that Labour and the Greens can win on. Forget the National Party spin that it’s business as usual. John Key just took a big breath and blew away the house of cards. As Labour’s post-Clark troubles showed, you can’t transfer your mana to a successor. None of the prospects for leadership have the everyman easiness that allowed John Key to “float from cloud to cloud” as National went about gutting state services while leaving our wellbeing in the hands of the old, extractive economy.

The Mt Roskill win (our first real two-horse major party race since MMP) and the many Labour and progressive victories in the local government elections have proved that there is a future in policy-driven campaigns and the mobilisation of heartland Labour voters. Anyone who stood on the side-lines with admiration but an abiding sense of hopelessness should take great heart from this.

Michelle Boag can emphasise the continuity of people and policy until she’s blue in the face, but that’s actually the problem for National. Those people have presided over a spiralling housing crisis with still no serious plan to build affordable homes or redirect speculative investment to the productive economy. They’ve carved $1.7 billion from the health budget and frozen public education funding. Hell, they haven’t even maintained community policing. The asset sales programme reaped less than their lower estimates, the TPPA was a flop and the flag referendum a complete fiasco. Tax cuts have been funded by borrowing, greenhouse gas emitters protected, and we are just as dependent on commodity prices as ever we were.

I like Bill English. When National blocked the introduction of paid parental leave by one vote in 1999 he had the grace to talk to me about it. When I led the National Distribution Union he’d come and talk to delegates and it took him a whole term to gut trade union education funding and to implement National’s union-weakening policies. But he got there in the end. He’s been the project leader for the asset sales, flag debacle, housing crisis and dismantling of core public services cloaked in the language of social investment (which is a nothing more than the creation of a for-profit market in social services).

Key’s departure is coincidental with a fair bit of media soul-searching about how elections are covered. They missed the looming landslide in Roskill while happily playing along with Key’s snide attacks on the Labour leader. They still amplify anything that Winston Peters says in a desperate search for a NZ Farage-Trump. But without Key the Government is going to have a lot more explaining to do. After all Key got away without explaining much at all – on Saudi sheep, SkyCity Convention Centre shenanigans, illegal spying, Jason Eade – all batted away by quoting the three words in the report that weren’t as damning as everything else or tuning the guns on the messenger.

It just isn’t going to be as easy for 5thNationalGovernment 2.0. Reinvention is off the cards. There can be no fourth term legacy project for Key that the public might be persuaded to back. An internal fight is already looming over tax cuts and superannuation. Meanwhile, National are looking down the barrel of total dependence on Peters. Key saw that destroy Clark’s third term and I’m betting he didn’t want to deal with it in his fourth. A Maori-Mana Party compact will push that block towards Labour and a Green-Labour deal in Ohariu knocks out Dunne.

All of this means Andrew Little can lead the next Government. The job now is to maximise the combined Labour and Green vote. Labour’s attention should be unequivocally on core Labour issues – a fairer diversified economy, solving the housing crisis, reducing poverty, improving social services. The Greens must stop thinking about competing a weakened Labour Party and plan to be in Government. We need to hear James Shaw and Metiria Turei make it very clear that they are campaigning for Andrew Little to be PM. Campaign for the first Labour-Green government. National’s collapsing house of cards deals the left a completely new hand.

I’ve had many people ask me my opinion of the Green Party co-leader contest. In the early stages I predicted that Kevin Hague would win, but that Gareth Hughes should. That was before James Shaw entered the race.

His nomination changes my mind on both points. Firstly, I think James Shaw can win the leadership. Secondly, I think he should.

Now, I’m on record as holding all four contenders in high regard. So don’t read this contribution as beating up on anyone. All can and should contribute to both the internal work and the presentation of the Greens to the public. All could work well in Cabinet or champion issues in opposition or from the cross benches. The Greens are lucky to be spoilt for choice here.

Before looking at the other options, I need to explain why I am not backing Kevin. Yes, he is the senior of the four and an old friend. He has had many successes as an Opposition MP. He’s also been an important backroom player, smoothing ruffled feathers and providing guidance on strategic planning at the caucus level. That’s why he is the front runner. He has heaps of support in the public health sector, who would have been pretty disappointed that the election outcome meant he missed out as Health Minister. This is what he should do next time. But I don’t see the portfolio as a defining one for the Greens. In fact it’s a risk portfolio for them – and he manages the risk well. He advocates vaccinations and fluoridation, not an obstacle-free course for a Green health spokesperson.

So Kevin is undoubtedly clever and principled.

But I don’t see him attracting new support to the Greens, and to the extent he does it is likely to be at the expense of Labour – a zero sum game. His natural milieu in the public health sector and rainbow constituency is already Green or Green-friendly Labour, and from a broader left point of view that’s good enough.

This co-leadership change is a time to think about constituency building. With Metiria Turei staying on, and considering the generally “mature” Green caucus and their established networks, there is already plenty of attention going to those naturally interested in progressive politics in general and the Green kaupapa specifically.

What is needed is a high-energy focus on what, for want of a better description, I’ll call “Generation Internet” constituency. This is not just an age-defined constituency, although it is largely younger. The constituency is free of the ethnic, sexuality and other prejudice often attaching to traditional Labour and National aligned groups. It wants jobs with socially and environmentally responsible organisations and businesses, but does not (for better or worse) identify with the traditional institutions of social democracy – Labour and the unions. It wants less regulation of private choices like drug use.

“Generation Internet” is on a big learning curve. Its assumptions are of freedom, but its reality is student loans, mortgage and consumer debt, a plethora of trivial consumption expectations and other real freedom barriers. Mostly, its parents had secure work and are heading into or enjoying prosperous retirements in freehold houses. This constituency was born in public hospitals and went to state schools, but assumes it needs health insurance and if it could afford to it would pay for private education before digging in to help out at the local school. It used to be certain about global warming but finds the sophisticated excuses for maintaining high carbon lifestyles appealing. You couldn’t get a better demonstration of “false consciousness” than exists in this crew, and they’ll need engagement not preaching to abandon that.

The more financially secure in Generation Internet care about inequality but mostly struggle to empathise with contemporaries whose lives are so utterly different from their own. They don’t get the welfare state. Yet, a not-insignificant section of the constituency live those very different lives – having grown up in households defined by the 1991 benefit cuts, the internet is the most equal and neutral domain they inhabit.

This constituency, mostly living off the vestiges of 1950s wealth, but infused with the innovative survivors of the 1990s, is nursing the next generation of leaders. They have no choice. But as wealth becomes concentrated at the top, so too does leadership. If, as the Greens intend, that generation can be oriented to planet protection and equality, then they have to connect the two ends of this constituency with each other and question shibboleths of left, right, and yes, Green. We are at a time in history where you can’t say “just because” and expect the kids to accept it.

Imagine the Greens as the Party that says “invent the future with us” to this generation. And if they really mean it, if they really mean to bring this constituency into the game (the infinite game) then they cannot predetermine the outcome. They cannot have all the answers. They must be able to project uncertainty as well as they already project belief. It would be possible, but inauthentic for Kevin to take this course.

So, to the other choices. I couldn’t support Vernon Tava. He’s muddled up about coalition scenarios, confusing independence with neutrality viz the two major parties. Current Green voters (and these cannot be toyed with as Labour rebuilds) are not neutral between Labour and National. When Russel Norman sowed the tiniest bit of doubt about this in the last week of the 2014 election campaign he lost Green votes. The new constituency might not care so much, but that’s where leadership counts. Everything that sustains National is about reducing the scope for questions. And it is questions that the new constituency get to ask, and answer.

So that leaves James Shaw and Gareth Hughes. Before James entered the race I made a marginal call in favour of Gareth over Kevin, based mainly on energy levels and a view to the longer term. He sits snugly in the internet generation. But it’s his slickness that misses the mark for me. Leaders who don’t know everything are needed more than those who do. Gareth hoovers up ideas and turns them into policy. He has a good turn of phrase. All this has helped his credibility. But I don’t see him facilitating the kind of big public conversation that’s needed for the Greens to maintain support and grow as the mainstream parties flog their popular policies. He would likely also be hamstrung (as is Metiria) by conformity on social justice issues – which isn’t going to help connect the two sides of the internet generation divide. New thinking is critical on work and welfare.

Gareth has also not shone organisationally. In 2014 he was freed of an electorate to focus on the youth vote, but there was little evidence of energy or effectiveness there, and don’t even start me on the lack of leadership (not just on Gareth’s part) that assured Peter Dunne of victory in Ohariu, Gareth’s home seat.

Of all four contenders, James Shaw is easily the most focused on the minutiae of winning votes. I don’t think you can lead a relatively small party without caring about where every vote will come from and playing a strong organisational leadership role. Russel got this, but at an intellectual level. What the Greens have lacked is an activist leader who actually enjoys campaigning for votes and the systems and processes needed to make that time pay off. James is the only candidate who can truly lead by example here.

Moreover, James doesn’t pretend to know everything. In my brief spell on the Green Party campaign committee I thoroughly enjoyed my interactions with him. His management consultancy experience seems to have done the trick with mainstream media credibility – which is a definite plus. He has the interpersonal skills to navigate a co-leadership that will not be underpinned by an existing friendship. That hasn’t existed at the top since Jeanette and Rod worked together, and whereas Russel and Metiria have got by with a strict division of labour, the potential for James to insert himself into the social policy discussion is, I think positive, and not to be feared. It will be delicate but that boundary needs to come down. When I listened to Greens on election platforms in 2014 say how much they “loved New Zealand” and parrot policy shopping lists under environmental, social and smart economy headlines I got bored. It might keep candidates on message but it hardly inspires the kind of potentially popular radicalism that will make it worth being Green.

Of the three credible candidates for Co-Leader, it is James Shaw that IMHO can best take on the internal challenge, the organisational leadership and the job of connecting to Generation Internet.

The idea for this tour was inspired in part by the pilgrimages of Satish Kumar, who travelled from India to Washington DC, and then around England with no money. His pilgrimages were acts of trust in people’s hospitality. If you are going to rethink the system it is surely essential to rethink money. We felt that by taking no money we would be challenging a major assumption that drives our society – that you need money to eat, sleep in a bed and move around. Of course we realise that other people will be spending money (directly or indirectly) to provide for us, but at least we will not be bound to our hosts, or them to us, via the current system of economic exchange. We will let you know how it feels to be dependent and without the means to buy a coffee or even take the bus if we are stranded. We will also let you know how it feels to receive hospitality, as we suspect there will be plenty along the way! Certainly so far it has been utterly heart-warming to have received so many offers for accommodation, meals, transport and meetings.

We weren’t quite brave enough to spend no money on the tour however. We were worried people might think it was cheeky of us to live off the generosity of others. So we have donated $4,000 to the organisations below. We deliberately chose these organisations in advance, as we felt it would spoil the spirit of the tour to have money up for grabs. We think these groups are doing great work, bringing attention to important issues and providing avenues for people to become active in social change or their communities. We also think there are numerous other inspiring groups out there; we just went for smaller, newer organisations that we happen to know fairly well.

It seems like there has been another attempt to isolate the Muslim community in New Zealand. Being able to spy on someone’s property without their knowledge for 48 hours is a level of insanity that no one in their right mind would agree with.

Personal privacy and dignity will be out the window for my community in order to fight a domestic threat that doesn’t even exist. To add salt to the wound, this legislation is going to be passed in a rush in order to heighten the sense of fear amongst the New Zealand public and push the National government’s war-happy agenda.

According to Bill English, this is the ‘most transparent government New Zealand has ever seen’. After the shady business that has been going on in the past six years, I find that very hard to believe. Passing a legislation as serious as this in a hastily manner confirms all apprehensions. Not allowing for any time for critical debate or opinion shows that they’re not too concerned for what is in the country’s best interest.

As a Muslim myself, I’m nervous. This isn’t because I’m hiding anything. I promise if you go through my Internet records, you’ll see pointless conversations about relatable memes and brainless banter. The MySky is full of movies and documentaries that no one is ever going to get around to watching, as I imagine would be the case for the ordinary Kiwi household. I’m nervous because what I do within the privacy of my own home is no one’s business but my own, yet I know this is going to be compromised.

I know the general response to that is ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about’. That is so easy to say when you’re not part of the targeted group and you know for a fact that you’re not going to be snooped on. That’s easy to say when most of your family members haven’t been “randomly selected” at the airport, sometimes causing them to miss their flight.

The way things are going though, I get the sense that anyone with a Muslim sounding name who criticises the government’s counter-intuitive tackling of terrorism is a target. You would think that by now they would’ve realised that the alienation of minorities is the most damaging response under these circumstances. The scary rise of Muslim fundamentalism in the UK in the past 10 years should be proof of this. The fact that the government is refusing to see this should worry us all. Its time to learn from past mistakes.

Today I’ve announced that I will be stepping down from the Internet Party leadership in December. This will happen once options for the future have been developed for discussion and decision among members.

My absolute focus in this election was on achieving a change of government. Of course I wish Hone, Annette Sykes, myself some of our crew were in Parliament. But we are not, and the electoral system is heavily weighted against new entrants. Dependence on winning a general seat or 5% is a very high bar.

I believe that you should have confidence that you can win seats in Parliament if you are going to spend precious time, social capital and resources on building a political party. I had that confidence right up to Election Day, but now I think the balance of probabilities for the Internet Party has changed. A political party is naturally exclusive and competitive. If it is not in Parliament, or people don’t see it getting there, then it is easy for its ideas to be dismissed.

When I said yes to the Internet Party in May it was obvious that Labour and the Greens would not win enough votes to form a majority government. A change of government would require every single progressive vote to count.

That included Internet Party voters, and for that to be assured the deal with MANA was critical. To achieve it MANA needed to have confidence in the political leadership of the Internet Party. That’s how my name emerged in discussions between the two parties.

My decision to lead the Internet Party was made just a couple of days before the announcement of the Internet MANA agreement. Before the announcement I tried to meet both David Cunliffe and Russel Norman, getting only as far as senior staff.

I knew that the existence of the Internet Party and the potential for Internet MANA was highly inconvenient to both of them. However, I also know that the starting point for successful political strategy is your real environment not the environment you wish you were in. Indeed I suggested Russel talk to Kim Dotcom many weeks before he did, in an attempt to dissuade Kim from starting the Internet Party. Russel’s response then was that it would be a waste of time. I disagreed (and still do) but that was then, this is now, and by May it was certainly too late to stop the Internet Party. Accepting Internet MANA as allies in changing the government was the only thing that made sense.

To a person, the Internet Party and MANA crews were uncompromisingly focused on a change of government.

To achieve that, there were always at least three things every “change of government party” had to do to be a credible alternative: (a) supporting Cunliffe; (b) building acceptance that a Parliamentary majority did not have to look like a single sun (National) with a few planets rotating around it; and (c) demonstrating respect for each other and sharing constructive feedback.

The spin that Labour and Green leaders have put on the impact of Internet MANA needs to be critically analysed. It was only the momentum created by the deal and then the growth of support during the road show that put Labour and the Greens within winning distance of government. We took the fight to Key in a way that they were not prepared to do, and for a while it paid off.

Later in the campaign our momentum fell off dramatically. Our own political mismanagement weakened our ability to respond to a full attack by the right, and the capitulation of other change the government parties to that narrative.

It was New Zealand First who capitalised on Dirty Politics.

Hopefully Labour’s post-election review will look at the impact of its desire to mirror National (never credible) and play boss party with everyone else (except with Winston Peters who they just seemed scared of).

And the Greens should reflect on the course they charted in early April. When they gave Labour an ultimatum on pre-announcing a coalition and then leaked details of those discussions I was still on the Green Party campaign committee. I thought the tactic was dangerous and would reduce the chance of changing the government. To me it signalled that competition with Labour would infect the Green campaign, and I’d been there and done that with Jim Anderton until the 1999 election and did not care for it. This was weeks before I talked to anyone from the Internet Party.

For Internet MANA’s part we stuck to the a, b, c above. But in the wake of the momentum building road trip we made some pretty basic errors in strategy and behaviour and in the context of an unrelenting attack we didn’t recover from them. That is another blog.

For now, a conclusion.

In this election, many of us worked with the idea that changing the government was like putting together a jigsaw. Yes, there were some wiggly pieces, but we could see a picture. I still firmly believe that jigsaw could have been completed with some co-operation.

Next time around I’d like to think we can do better than just a political jigsaw. To that end I am stepping away from the electoral focus for now to pay more attention to the “why” of the “Why we need change” question. The limits of the election discourse exposed just how much more deeply and widely we need to build acceptance of the need for social change.

I cut my political teeth at a time when not a single progressive person believed that user pays tertiary education was ok. I stood on platforms this year where all our potential partners in a parliamentary majority defended it as (at best) a necessary evil. I want to change the government in 2017. But I want things like that to change with it.

We’ve both wanted to do a pilgrimage for many years. But, unlike many modern pilgrims, we wanted to be pilgirms in our own country and get closer to our communities, rather than seek greater distance from them.

We are both big fans of the extraordinary adventures of ordinary people, like Robyn Davidson’s Tracksand Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and ultra athletes like Lisa Tamati, Pat Deavoll and others. We have run marathons, tramped and camped (all mild in comparison).

So in the aftermath of the 2014 General Election, when Laila just wanted to go bush, Niki suggested a unique pilgrimage. She had always admired Satish Kumar’s walks, first as a young man from India to Washington DC and later in life throughout Britain. Both times he took no money and relied on the hospitality of the people along the way.

This tour is in the same spirit. Travelling without money or our own transport demonstrates our trust that we will be cared for and protected. So that this isn’t seen as a cheapo holiday we will donate the equivalent of our journey expenses to four grassroots causes. (We are in the process of deciding these now. We do not want to turn our donations into a competition for funding as that would not be in the spirit of this tour. We love everyone who is working to make our country a place of life and freedom!)

On the way we want to connect with as many people as we can – people who like us are generally fed up with how narrow the rules of debate have become. And how small and elitist our political establishment is.

New Zealand has growing inequality and we are the 22nd biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. At the same time our government tells us that we are doing our bit on both counts and we shouldn’t worry about it; well, that just makes us mad.

So we want to Rethink the System. The whole messy, power-ridden lot. That means sharing our (re)thinking with you and helping to create an environment for a wider discussion.

Please have a look at the schedule on our website and let us know if you can host us, and/or host a meeting during our North Island journey.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/11/19/a-pilgrimage-with-my-sister-rethink-the-system/feed/14What Key will say to me in private vs what he will say about me in public – the negative polarisation of politicshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/07/02/what-key-will-say-to-me-in-private-vs-what-he-will-say-about-me-in-public-the-negative-polarisation-of-politics/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/07/02/what-key-will-say-to-me-in-private-vs-what-he-will-say-about-me-in-public-the-negative-polarisation-of-politics/#commentsTue, 01 Jul 2014 22:04:37 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=48685

Shortly after he was elected as MP for Helensville John Key phoned me for my insights into West Auckland.

In 2009 Mark Ford asked me to manage the workforce transition at the Auckland Transition Agency. That approach was sanctioned by Ministers. All the feedback from government on our management of the staff transition and the constructive engagement with the PSA throughout was positive.

As National Secretary of the NDU I had many interactions with ministers, including Bill English who accepted an invitation to our senior delegate workshop which Kate Wilkinson had refused. Indeed I think this engagement helped to stave off the anti-union agenda and the attack on funding for union education that became a hallmark of National’s second term.

Not to mention the numerous private conversations I’ve had over years of engaging with this and the former government which have been variously friendly, tense, courteous and critical. And the untold exchanges with officials at the behest of Ministers over areas of public policy in which the organisations in which I’ve had senior roles have had an interest.

I make these points in response to the name-calling that National signalled as an election theme at their Conference last weekend. Those comments signal a polarisation that is being driven by National, and it’s a direction that should be of deep concern beyond those who already support a change of government.

I have never been a fan of polarisation. As a new Minister I returned from a visit to Ireland fired up by the possibilities of delegating the negotiation of major public policy issues to representatives of the communities and sectors directly involved. Ireland’s National Social and Economic Council (similar models operate throughout northern Europe) brought together union, business, farmer and community sector leaders (the four pillars) as an engine room for national development. At the end of my visit – which was looking specifically at how Ireland had developed its children’s policy – I met the Trinity College academics whose research had been key in that process. I reflected to them how consistent the conversation was, not only with them but with the government, union and business leadership I had also met with. One laughed and lilted “do you think we have been brainwashed?”

My emphatic answer was “no”. Here I heard government officials, union leaders and employers talking as passionately about children as academics and community based organisations. Just as such leaders had earlier redesigned tertiary education (making it free) and were tackling other big social and economic questions.

But when I returned with my report to the Cabinet, my enthusiasm for such a delegation of policy making was met with, well, raised eyebrows and suspicion. We might have MMP, but we still practice an adversarial policy making approach which does not serve us well.

So policy areas like industrial relations, tax, welfare, education, transport, technology, business development – you name it – just get stuck in positional ruts, rather than being addressed as shared issues and problems under a broad framework of social and economic development.

This election things are more polarised than ever. The predominance of John Key and the National Party is extremely risky to the building of a consensus on issues like digital development, climate change, and poverty. The diversity of the parties committed to a change of government and the collective track record of our leaders in and outside government is a virtue for us. It could promise a style of government that engages rather than dictates.

The parties seeking to replace National have an opportunity to demonstrate the possibilities of constructive engagement, and to imagine an engagement that goes beyond Parliament to the frontline of our society. Let’s hope that David Cunliffe can convey that message at Labour’s Conference this weekend.

Three weeks into my new role seems a good time to blog. Today we will reveal the Internet Party’s candidates for the Internet MANA Party list. You’ll see that we are bringing a fresh leadership into national politics.

Our team embodies a new political constituency. Smart, young and non-tribal.

This team has done things outside politics that will invigorate progressive representation. They have worked in real jobs, often on the digital frontier or helping others catch up to it. Many are deeply rooted in provincial communities. All have an ethic of service that is reflected in their contribution as volunteers at home and abroad and now their commitment to changing the government by winning Internet MANA Party votes.

I am stoked with the strength of our Auckland candidates. Auckland matters very much, and yet it has for a long time trailed the capital in fostering and promoting new progressive leadership. Perhaps it’s our size and diversity, our mental distance from the political centre, but it’s always been hard to connect Aucklanders to national politics. You see the result when almost every civic leader wants the City Rail Link and all we get is more roads. When 2km from the CBD my internet speed is crap and the only reason it was faster in Te Atatu was because our neighbourhood couldn’t afford broadband. When voter turnout in the South Auckland electorates falls at a similar rate to the growth in inequality.

We are serious about Auckland, serious about the potential of the Internet to turn around regional decline and serious about bridging the digital divide.

On that note in just a few weeks since the Internet MANA agreement was reached, it is taking on its own identity within our planning and thinking.

Yes, the agreement was sparked by a shared interest in ensuring Internet Party votes would not be wasted – a situation that would have undermined our mission to change the government. But such an agreement would not have been possible without a strong values base shared by its advocates in both parties. I firmly believe that the substance of this agreement lies in its linking of two important constituencies through these common values. Among those values is a spirit of entrepreneurialism that is disrupting business, culture and now politics, and the Internet is a tool and a catalyst for that.

As I said to our candidates last weekend, imagine if we had embraced the opportunity 180 years ago to forge a society based on the universal human values we espouse. How different Aotearoa would look now, for Maori, Pakeha and newcomers. There is a Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today.

In three months we can change the government. To do that we must jolt the disengaged into a conversation about politics. We have started.

First defendant: You run one of New Zealand’s biggest publicly listed companies and your main activity, casino gambling, is a potentially dangerous and highly regulated one. Your license gives you a monopoly on casino gambling in Auckland, by far the biggest market for it. To keep your license you have to face independent inquiries, public consultation and an open public submission process every 15 years. You have faced heavy criticism from public interest watchdogs who say that you have failed to comply with terms of your license relating to harm management. Under legislation controlling this activity some things you would like to do are banned outright.

Second defendant: You are the Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism. You want an international convention centre and have funded Auckland City’s feasibility study on this. Meanwhile you, your Chief of Staff and other advisers have had discussions with the First Defendant who has told you that they are also keen to expand their convention capacity but would need the government to relax gambling regulations so that they could make the money to fund it. When your officials recommend following through with the Auckland City process and completing a detailed business case and establishment plan first, you tell them to talk directly to the First Defendant instead. There are many meetings about the First Defendant’s plans; with yourself, other ministers, your advisers and various officials. At one dinner you invite them to think bigger. Then your government asks others to submit expressions of interest, without telling them you are already talking to the First Defendant and without giving them the same information. You never finish the assessment of other people’s expressions of interest and then you declare that the First Defendant is your favourite and that you will trade the convention centre for gambling concessions. You drop one line in your internal affairs policy to this effect and then tell your MPs, even the ones who have championed problem gambling, that they can’t exercise their conscience on the issue when the Speaker calls a personal vote. Oh yes, and you write into the law enacting this deal that if a future Parliament reverses those concessions then they will have to pay the First Defendant for the privilege.

These are the bare bones of the scenario that is making its way through Parliament as the NZ International Convention Centre Bill.

The history of the deal and the dodgy constitutionality of granting regulatory concessions related to one activity as a way of funding a completely different activity have had lots of earlier airplay. Here are some more reasons to stand up against this deal:

It’s impossible to assess the value of the concessions to Skycity because the data isn’t public and it’s their data anyway. Industry commentators say the concessions are likely to be more generous than the government believes;

The claimed numbers of new jobs do not appear in the document the government has relied on – a report from NZIER that actually says there will only be a net gain of 18 jobs nationally once the convention centre is operating – and outside Auckland there will be jobs lost as investment shifts to Auckland;

The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Internal Affairs criticised the harm minimisation provisions in the bill as weak or not new anyway, and that advice didn’t make it into the officials’ regulatory impact statement on the bill;

The government made its decisions on the deal without any advice or information on the costs of increased gambling in human harm and criminal activity. We already know that 40% of pokie revenue comes from problem gamblers and that there is a direct relationship between pokie numbers and problem numbers.

There is only one vote in this deal and it will be back on the floor of Parliament in early November. Not only does Skycity get to avoid two full license renewal processes with the independent analysis and public scrutiny that entails, but it has not even had the courtesy to make a submission to the select committee and to answer the questions of MPs.

Yes, you read that right. Skycity is being presented with a massive set of concessions, to do things that are controlled or even prohibited by the Gambling Act and to do them longer than the Act allows for, without having to face any public or independent scrutiny of their operations. And they aren’t even coming to the lawmakers to say thanks.

Isn’t it time we put much more pressure on those MPs that could make a difference? Are you on for a month of action and would you front up to events and meetings on this issue? Let me know at laila.harre@parliament.govt.nz.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/09/26/skycity-dirty-deeds-done-dirt-cheap/feed/2Asset sales really a transfer of wealth from the many to the fewhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/04/asset-sales-really-a-transfer-of-wealth-from-the-many-to-the-few/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/04/asset-sales-really-a-transfer-of-wealth-from-the-many-to-the-few/#commentsMon, 03 Jun 2013 19:25:43 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=15983Treasury’s release of investor details for the Mighty River Power sale just show how concentrated the ownership of half the company has become since last month’s float.

From 100% ownership by 100% of New Zealanders Green Party analysis shows that half the retail shares went to just 13,000 people and organisations, with 10 per cent of the retail shares sold to a mere 400 investors who put in nearly $250,000 each on average. Altogether the 113,000 retail investors amounted to less than half the number anticipated by the government.

As Russel Norman put it, “National said that 113,000 ‘mums and dads’ had bought Mighty River Power shares. Now, we learn that companies, trusts, and financial institutions were counted by National as ‘mums and dads’.”

With the largest of the generator/retailers, Meridian, next in line for sale, it’s impossible to see anything other than even greater concentration of ownership occurring. As Mighty River Power shares traded below their float price there are already calls from some for a sweeter loyalty deal – in other words a bigger subsidy – for those who buy in next time around. There is talk of splitting the sale into at least two chunks.

All of this gives us more time and even more reason to make a referendum on the asset sales count. We have just five weeks to get the last 16,500 valid signatures needed to force a referendum on the government’s asset sales programme. And there are no more chances after this one.

Not only is the programme failing in its own terms (attracting non-investors into the share market – none of the other justifications for sales made any sense at all), its continuation in the face of the failure and public opposition to privatisation adds to the lengthening list of ways in which the government is using a one vote majority Parliament to play without democracy:

• Writing to other parties to say that it would set up a process to discuss the recommended changes to MMP and then a few months later saying it won’t make any changes because those same parties hadn’t been able to reach a consensus (even though not a single discussion had been convened by the Minister)
• Criminalising protest at sea
• Legislating over the rights of parents of adult disabled children to go to court for the remedies that three consecutive court decisions had said they were entitled to
• Legislating to lock in increased gambling opportunities at Sky City for 35 years without any of the existing checks and balances and giving Sky City the right to sue a future government for restoring current or new controls
• Promising to veto 26 weeks paid parental leave even if a majority of MPs vote for it
• Much of what’s happening in Christchurch

Whether or not the government holds the referendum before the next sale, or the one after that; and whether or not it heeds the outcome; the referendum does present it with a serious political problem.
Despite its continued primacy in opinion polls, the inevitability of the political equivalent of the second law of thermodynamics is starting to take shape around the government. Russel Norman’s brutal description of the government at the Green Party conference last weekend tested this narrative. The commentary that followed from those who disagreed did not refute his substantive critique, but only the Muldoon analogy.

Some have labelled the petition effort for the referendum as futile in the face of the government’s determination to sell on. Think again. The government has two options in the face of a growing concern at its anti-democratic disposition. One is to box on regardless, in which case the success of the petition and the referendum will give hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who sign and then vote even more reason to turn out in 2014. The other is to listen to the people and to stop. I’d call that a win-win.Download it now, sign and post it back by 30 June:

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/06/04/asset-sales-really-a-transfer-of-wealth-from-the-many-to-the-few/feed/11Sky City a rigged bethttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/05/14/sky-city-a-rigged-bet/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/05/14/sky-city-a-rigged-bet/#commentsMon, 13 May 2013 21:00:31 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=12615“The issue for us is we know that at least 40 per cent of the money that is lost on machines comes from people who are at risk or who have problems, and about 70 per cent of the people that we see have problems with pokie machines, not other forms of gambling.”

So said Problem Gambling Foundation chief executive Graeme Ramsey a couple of weeks ago when the Department of Internal Affairs released figures showing that Pokie machine expenditure in pubs and clubs dropped four per cent in the year to March. Licence holder numbers fell from 359 to 353, venue numbers dropped from 1403 to 1367 and the number of gaming machines from 18,001 to 17,542.

The community battle against pokies took out 439 pokies last year. Sky City just got 230 of those back – along with 52 more gaming tables, or 40 tables and 240 “Automated Table Game Player Stations”, various payment options that allow people to bet more money with greater anonymity and an unchallenged license extension to 2048. Auckland Council is currently consulting on the extension of the predominant “sinking lid” policy on pokie numbers to all parts of the city, with 99% of submissions said to favour the elimination or reduction of pokie machines in Auckland.

According to AUT’s Gambling and Addiction Research Centre, of 992 new Gambling Hotline gambler clients 811 were pokie victims and 57 casino table or card gamblers; leaving just 124 to all other gambling forms. 7 of these cited Lotteries Commission Products as their primary gambling mode.

There is no shortage of evidence linking pokies and gaming tables to serious gambling harm.

Goldman Sachs estimates the extra gambling opportunities promised under yesterday’s deal will generate an extra $42 million profit for Sky City a year – a 30% increase on last year’s $142 million. Considering the 2009 MED report which suggested the convention centre would operate on a break-even basis (actually a million a year profit according the report), Sky City’s owners are looking at a 10%+ return on the new investment (the capital costs of the convention centre are set at $402 million under the heads of agreement). My back of the envelope calculation says 2012 profits based on current market capitalization equal 5.4%. No wonder investors boosted the share price by 3.4% yesterday.

Now Sky City has made a deal with the Government to bank these extra profits for the next 35 years. Under the agreement any attempt by future governments to reduce gambling at Sky City will give rise to compensation.

This is looking like a one-way bet. For Sky city to lose on the deal (if losing means reducing the return on the land, bricks and mortar value of the new investment below the current rate of return on all investor funds) then I figure it would have to lose more than $20 million a year on the operation of the convention centre. Given that in 2009 MED estimated convention centre costs at about $16 million and revenue at about $17 million that seems pretty unlikely.

The government knows this deal will entrench casino-caused gambling harm and that every new pokie machine and gaming table will feed gambling addictions making life even harder for the multitude of people that problem gambling affects. It has crossed the line between casino regulator and casino operator. In fact it has gone one better, trashing the role of regulator altogether for the next 35 years and partnering with the casino on a project that not only promises a bigger profit from local punters but will siphon convention goers to the shiny new slot machines.

The Government has presented this Parliament with an ethics test. I hope it passes.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/05/14/sky-city-a-rigged-bet/feed/11National’s war on NZ Unionshttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/04/30/nationals-war-on-nz-unions/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/04/30/nationals-war-on-nz-unions/#commentsMon, 29 Apr 2013 20:41:23 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=10315As National continues its murder by a thousand cuts of our already fragile collective bargaining laws let’s hope the welcome joint promise of Labour and the Greens to sort out the electricity market will also be applied to labour law reform come 2014.

In both areas – the electricity market and labour law – the two parties need to leap frog over the relatively mild policy responses of the 1999-2008 Labour-dominated governments (including the 1999-2002 Labour-Alliance coalition) and take the more decisive action needed to achieve the desired result more directly. Just as the current electricity regime has failed to deliver a fair price, the Employment Relations Act has not achieved the expansion of unionisation and collective bargaining that could deliver improvements by reducing the extent to which wages and working conditions are “in competition”.

When it comes to both power pricing and labour laws, National’s move from the equivalent of “détente” to “first strike” has given other parties permission to take much clearer sides.

Just as National’s arrogant pursuit of power company privatisations has shifted the balance away from benign tolerance of price gouging by power companies (after all most of the super-profits came back to the community as dividends), the unwillingness of National and its backers to live with what has been a very employer-friendly compromise in the form of the Employment Relations Act [ERA] invites the opposition to implement much more directly transformative industrial relations policies when they get the opportunity to govern.

Briefly, National plan several changes to the ERA which will all make it just a bit harder for workers who do not currently have a union or a collective agreement to get one, and for those who do to keep it or improve it. Among the changes:
• Removing the good faith requirement for the parties to collective bargaining to conclude a collective agreement. Instead, the Employment Relations Authority may declare whether collective bargaining has concluded. Presumably this means that employers can now refuse to conclude a collective agreement as a matter of principle, flying on the face of the Act’s purported promotion of collective bargaining.

• Removing the 30-day rule that prevent employers offering terms and conditions of employment to new workers that are inconsistent with the collective agreement. This was one of the few tightenings of Labour’s 1999 policy that the Alliance managed to secure in the original ERA. The Alliance had wanted collective agreements to bind everyone in their coverage clause (union or non-union) with all workers voting on whether a bargaining fee should be paid (a union shop). Labour had wanted to restrict coverage only to union members and opposed a bargaining fee option. The 30-day rule was the compromise – a foot in the door for new workers, which has resulted in de facto coverage of most non-members by the collective agreement and therefore limited employers’ ability to divide and rule. A bargaining fee provision was eventually introduced in 2004, but it is so hedged (employers have to agree to it and individual workers bound by it can opt out of paying the fee) that it’s not surprising it is remains intact in the current reform.

• Allowing employers to opt out of multi-employer bargaining. This change removes the legal niceties of multi-employer bargaining, which have in reality allowed intransigent employers to avoid concluding multi-employer agreements anyway.

The truth about all these provisions is that they have only improved the environment for collective bargaining to a very moderate extent. Now that they are being removed altogether the case for a much more outcome-focused industrial relations framework must be made. CTU and Labour Party policy has been moving in this direction, reintroducing the notion of industry agreements which aim to leverage collectively bargained outcomes at an enterprise level (eg in Progressive’s supermarkets and the large Pak n Saves) to gain similar outcomes across an industry. Let’s call this indirect collective bargaining – or awards.

At the same time direct collective bargaining needs attention – especially if it is to provide the wedge for on-going improvements at an industry level. A combination of improved organising rights (restoring the full right of entry for unions, for instance, and providing a statutory code for the exercise of that right in non-union workplaces which completely removes employer discretion in relation to the union’s initial contact with workers) and better bargaining processes (not only the duty to conclude collective agreements but easier access for workers to arbitration including for multi employer agreements) are needed.

For some workers, these kinds of steps will be the difference between life and death. On Sunday the CTU marked Workers Memorial Day with a service that honoured forestry workers killed at work in one of our most dangerous industries. Bereaved mothers and wives spoke of the pressure placed on the 300+ contracting companies competing for business from the forest owners to work gangs hard, long and dangerously. With less immediate danger, the same scenario is played out among homecare and aged care operators, cleaning companies and a multitude of other service providers. Since 1991 our employment laws have incentivised fragmentation and competition at the cost not just of living standards but sometimes of lives.

The strengthening of New Zealand’s paid parental leave scheme is still hostage to political promises made 14 years ago. It’s time to move on. PM Helen Clark’s commitment to business that an employer levy to fund leave payments would only be introduced over her “dead body” resulted in full state funding for the first 12 (now 14) weeks of leave at a current cost of $156 million a year. At the time the gesture saved the average employer less than $1.50 per week per employee.

To put that promise into perspective, the 12 week scheme, even with the higher maximum payments originally proposed by the Alliance, would have cost employers the equivalent of ANZAC Day falling on a Monday instead of a Sunday. Parliament has just passed a law to Monday-ise not just ANZAC Day but also Waitangi Day – a new cost on employers that’s roughly the same as the level of payroll levy that could fully fund 26 weeks paid parental leave at at least the current rate.

For the cost of just one of those Mondays employers could fund Labour MP Sue Mornoney’s worthwhile proposal to extend leave to 6 months. It could also raise the payment cap. Instead that extension is at the mercy of Bill English’s veto. Even with Labour and Greens on the treasury benches improvements to parental leave will be competing for priority with funding for schools, health programmes, child poverty alleviation and dozens of other basic needs – as long as we continue to only look to state coffers to pay for it.

Tomorrow I’m making my submission to the select committee considering the Moroney Bill. I’ll support the extension of leave to 26 weeks. I’ll also suggest that this and future improvements to the scheme should be more strongly linked to its employment rights objectives and taken out of the competition for state resources.

Yes, paid parental leave has a wide range of social and general economic benefits. And yes, extending leave from 14 weeks to six months as proposed by the current bill would enhance those benefits. We are well past litigating the benefits of adequate time off work for new parents, especially mothers. But we do need to relitigate the double-standard that applies to this necessary leave in comparison to other forms of necessary leave from work. No one questions full employer funding of annual leave, sick leave, statutory holidays or work injuries. Even non-work injury costs (including 80% of lost earnings after the first week off work) for earners is paid for through a universal levy on all earners.

Let’s look at some of the numbers generated by this double standard.

While men currently make up about 53% of the employed workforce, of the total ACC bill for work and non-work injuries funded by either the employers or the earners accounts (i.e. funded directly by all employers and all workers) 71% is claimed by men, a dollar difference of more than $641 million last year. Now let’s assume that all the extra paid parental leave Parliament is considering was used by mothers. That would cost another $133 million. If that was funded from the workplace (a payroll levy) it still only amounts to just 20% of the gap between the cost of ACC for men and for women.

Babies, like accidents, are normal lifetime experiences which necessitate time off work. It just so happens that it’s generally women who need that time off for babies and it’s generallly men who have expensive accidents. We’ve seen our way as a society to adequately addressing one of these necessities as an employment right, but not the other. That is what structural discrimination looks like.

In the case of paid parental leave the discrimination goes further. Those leave entitlements we all benefit from more or less equally – annual leave, sick leave, bereavement leave are funded at 100% of our earnings as normal wages. ACC is paid at 80% of earnings. The current 14 weeks of parental leave is paid at a maximum of $475.16 a week – or about 58% of the average full time wage for women.

As Parliament considers this first really significant expansion of the scheme it is time to re-visit the funding issue. There will be a point at which longer and higher value leave entitlements provide diminishing direct returns to society as a whole. That does not mean the importance of other grounds for supporting longer and higher value paid leave are also diminished. In particular the employment rights and equity considerations that have been a key driver for paid parental leave in New Zealand remain as strong at six months as they were at 12 or 14 weeks.

By allowing the current 26 week Bill to get to a Select Committee Parliament has tentatively supported longer paid parental leave. Ironically, through much of the life of the Bill, ACC was consulting on new employer and earner levies that would have reduced its annual levy income by more than $317 million per annum, or nearly 2.4 times the amount needed to fund the extension of paid parental leave to 26 weeks. This followed reductions the year before of 22% and 17% for employers and earners respectively. A fraction of these savings – actual and proposed – could have been transferred to much better paid parental leave. Not only 26 weeks, but a fairer cap that didn’t cut wages by an average of 42% for women on leave and some separate paid leave for partners or fathers to increase the uptake of paternity or partner leave.

We are locked into a paradigm that sees paid parental leave as principally a social beneft rather than an employment right. It is forced to compete for state funding with every other basic need. As long as that continues our entitlements will remain inadequate – in length or in value or both – and we will continue to trade off the right of workers to a reasonable and properly paid work break when we have babies against more pressing priorities.

Sure, we’d been friends for a long time, but this wasn’t a courtship. The last time anyone actually asked me to join was just after the 2005 election. It was Rod Donald and we were at the CTU Conference as the Greens were being side-lined from Helen Clark’s third Government. Rod thought it was time for me to come out of mourning for the Alliance. I took another eight years to get there.

Ever since I was presented with a smorgasbord of political parties and tendencies as a 15 year old activist (I chose Labour), party joining has been a serious matter for me. Voting, leafleting, making donations – that kind of stuff is easy (which isn’t to say it’s easy to get people to do it). The Party’s grateful, it’s not an exclusive deal and you can hang onto your independence. But joining? That’s going all the way. And for a practical person like me that kind of leap requires a balance of conviction and trust.

Let’s start with the conviction.

A week ago Julie Anne Genter, Green MP and transport spokesperson, kicked off a speaking tour on the case for the Auckland City Rail Link. It’s not as if the Greens have the monopoly on this patently obvious addition to Auckland’s transport network. Len Brown campaigned on it in 2010. Labour says it will fund it if elected in 2014. A business lobby is about to get behind it in a big way. The Greens do, however, have a monopoly on coherence. The rail link doesn’t just make sense on the transport economics front. It makes sense as part of our contribution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, it makes sense in democratising access to transport infrastructure and it makes sense for the development of a city of neighbourhoods.

Last night more than 60 West Aucklanders came to hear Green Co-Leader Meteria Turei and housing spokesperson Holly Walker talk about the Green’s “Home for Life” proposal. One time Green candidate and housing issues expert, Alan Johnson, who joined them on the platform, didn’t shy away from the conundrum that Auckland’s housing shortage, twinned with excessive investment in Auckland property, represents. With 4000 fewer houses being built each year than can accommodate our population growth it is going to take more than the unitary plan to stand between a liveable city and the Government’s appetite for easy greenfields development.

Housing and transport are among the big systems issues of our time. How they are resolved will define the kind of lives our grandchildren live. And big systems need political champions. There’s no question that the right have able champions for their big systems – epitomised by Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee with their extractive industry crusade and roads of national significance, window dressed by Judith Collin’s human rights appointments, John Banks’s charter schools and Paula Bennett’s periodic plucking of the welfare state’s eyebrows.

The Greens provide different sorts of champion, not just because of any particular technical policy solution but more fundamentally because the kind of systems thinking this stuff needs is a natural fit with greenie-ness. Greens like getting on trains and bikes and putting out our recycling bins. We’d rather be on a surfboard than a jet ski. We dream of community gardens even when we haven’t got the time or local connections to make them happen. Most of us use far more resources than we could claim to replace, but we’d accept significantly greater limits on that in the interests of social justice and a healthy planet.

But this sense of an identity shared with other greens needed a booster to get my broken political heart over the line to join another political party. While the part of me that smiles when I put my peelings in the compost bin on the bench or hands over my keeper cup to the barista like a secret green handshake could have a happy picnic with the Green Party, it takes more than that to get into the political trench with folk. It takes trust.

Russel Norman has taken down a big hurdle there. I wish the party had a dollar for everyone whose first response when I say I work for the Greens is a positive comment on Russel’s grip of his economic portfolios. Given a pretty good chance of having Greens in government next year, that matters.

So with two of my identities intact – the greenie one and the social democratic one – I’m ready to get involved in the machinations of a party again. Not enough of us do and there is a lot of work to be done. Naturally enough I’m keen to be involved in policy work in my old patch of industrial relations, where it’s time to address the deficiencies of the Employment Relations Act, and I’ll be putting my oar in for free tertiary education and universal student allowances. I’d like to see the Greens navigate the battle lines of welfare and work without getting their heads shot off (or shooting off each others). This is one of the toughest policy challenges of our time.

I’m looking forward to having my say in the list selection but I’ll be steering clear of anything that requires tortuous consensus decision-making around the minutiae of Party rules. That’s when you’ll find me peeling the spuds.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/03/26/laila-harre-goes-all-the-way-warning-politically-explicit/feed/18The emotional loss of public assets – why heart over wallet mattershttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/03/12/the-emotional-loss-of-public-assets-why-heart-over-wallet-matters/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/03/12/the-emotional-loss-of-public-assets-why-heart-over-wallet-matters/#commentsMon, 11 Mar 2013 20:04:25 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=3621When my partner Barry and I first got together we’d leave Auckland most weekends on whimsical ventures to quintessential New Zealand locations. National parks and beaches featured but so too did our energy assets: Marsden Point, the Motunui methanol plant and, indelibly, the Whakamaru Power Station. There the might of the Waikato powered the factories and family dinners which lit up the load-sensitive charts of the national grid in the adjacent switching station. We were transfixed by the marriage of natural power and human endeavour and felt deeply connected to it.

It’s a feeling we often recall, both shedding a few tears last week as the Government’s launch of the Mighty River share float headlined.

There’s been plenty of commentary on the economics of the sales. These days no one pretends that the private sector will be better at running these companies than we are. Stockbrokers will make hay on early turnover and the bonus for those who hang on longer is a tidy subsidy to those who can afford to. The Capital Markets Development Taskforce, which came up with the idea in 2009, wasn’t concerned with our energy policy or the debt-dividend trade off (which doesn’t favour sales by the way). They just approached our national assets as financial tools to address private sector failure to provide “high quality equity offerings”.

The draining of our national wealth to private interests has been like a chronic public policy illness all my grown up life. In my album is a 1990 snapshot of me and baby Sam outside the local 3 Guys supermarket collecting signatures against Labour’s sale of Telecom. At the same time Rob Cameron, who would later emerge as chair of the aforementioned taskforce, was advising Bell Atlantic and Ameritech on the acquisition of Telecom. That sale is now virtually universally criticised for leaving New Zealand with the worst of all worlds – an unregulated privately owned natural monopoly which took nearly 20 years and the loss of countless opportunities to bring into line.

23 years later we are all still at our posts. Today Sam’s and my signatures lie on the biggest ever petition for a Citizens Initiated Referendum to be presented to Parliament. The 392,000 signatures should produce the 308,000 from enrolled voters needed for a referendum. While the Government derides the effort put in to collect signatures (the Greens alone have mobilised over 3000 volunteers in the 10 months since the launch of the petition), they represent hundreds of thousands of conversations, each triggering or re-triggering someone’s discomfort with this pending loss. To those who sigh as they sign and say “good on you but this won’t make a difference” I want to say, “that means it already has.”

This is a point worth making, even if the Government defies its public. It’s been worth making through the petition, and it will be worth making with the referendum. Not just because of economics or the importance of energy policy to the environment or the impact of continued power price gouging on ordinary households. I didn’t shed a tear this week because my power prices might go up, but because my ability to buy into this racket means nothing compared to the loss of another major public endeavour, and one so strongly linking generations.

New Zealanders have opposed asset sales for three decades. That matters. We held the line against the sale of Auckland assets even when the law demanded it. In fact holding the line stopped the sale of the Ports of Auckland not once, not twice, but three times and it will again if necessary. Holding the line has prevented water privatisation. It restored ACC to public control. Christchurch will hold the line against this Government’s demands to sell its assets to pay for a rebuild for which there are many more sensible funding options. Holding the line has protected us from the PPP failures now being bankrolled by other governments and it will give us a publicly owned, built and managed City Rail Link in Auckland.

Holding the line made it possible to rescue an airline and a railway. It even made it possible for the Alliance as a minority partner in coalition to start a new bank.

So when the presidents of Greypower and the NZ Union of Students Associations renew that intergenerational pact as they hand over the petition on the steps of Parliament today I’ll enjoy buying a celebratory sandwich with my Kiwibank Foundation Customer card.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/03/12/the-emotional-loss-of-public-assets-why-heart-over-wallet-matters/feed/14About Laila Harréhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/02/22/about-laila-harre/
Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:54:59 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=1689Laila Harré BA, LLB Auckland, New Zealand – Laila Harré has had a long career in industrial relations and policy making. She completed degrees in Law and Political Studies in 1987 and after an internship with a Geneva based NGO in 1988 she worked as a mediation officer at the NZ Human Rights Commission, as an adviser to the NZ Minister for Disarmament and then for several years as a trade union lawyer.

In 1996 Laila went into Parliament as an Alliance MP and she served as a cabinet minister in the 1999-2002 Labour-Alliance coalition government. She was Minister for Women’s Affairs, Youth Affairs and Statistics and Associate Minister of Labour and Commerce. In Parliament she led a successful campaign for the introduction of paid parental leave and championed many other labour causes.

Since 2002 Laila has held senior roles in the trade union movement – in the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and then as National Secretary of the private sector National Distribution Union. In 2009 and 2010 she worked for the Auckland Transition Agency, established to oversee the merger of all the local authorities in Auckland into the largest local authority in Australasia, the Auckland Council. She was responsible for all matters concerning the employment of local government staff and for establishing the new council’s HR department.

As an ILO specialist based in Suva 2010-2012 Laila worked with governments, employer and worker organisations in the eight Pacific ILO-member countries to plan and implement programmes to address their decent work priorities. Areas of focus included, in various countries, labour law reform, frameworks for minimum wages and collective bargaining, social security policy, the strengthening of worker and employer organisations, and the promotion of employment as a priority in national planning.

She returned to New Zealand in May 2012 where she works as Issues Director for the Green Party, the third largest party in the New Zealand Parliament. She undertakes occassional work on labour issues within the South Pacific.